DEVELOPERS are planning to build a block of flats for 180 students in Headington.

Frontier Estates is holding a public consultation at Oxford Brookes University today for its plans.

The development will replace four homes on the corner of London Road and Latimer Road.

Mike Mansell, director of Frontier Estates, said: “It is to deal with the demand that Oxford Brookes has for student accommodation as close as possible to their campus.

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“We have been talking to them for a while and we managed to secure the site about a year ago.

“Since then we have been working on a scheme.

“It will have to be carefully designed so that it doesn’t impact on the community.”

But Ruth Wilkinson, city councillor for Headington, said news of the development “has been a bolt from the blue for the neighbours”.

She added: “I’m disappointed that developers haven’t talked to Highfield Residents’ Association.

“The best schemes in Headington are the ones where residents and developers work together to get the best possible result.

“I’ll be working to improve communication and I’ll go to the exhibition next week.”

Oxford City Council’s planning policy dictates that any residential housing lost to purpose-built student accommodation must be replaced.

Mr Mansell said this would be the case in this development, with four residential homes incorporated into the plan.

He expected that a planning application would be submitted next month and, if approved, work would begin early next year.

The student block would be on the opposite side of the road to Dorset House, which was used as Oxford Brookes’s School of Occupational Therapy and which has since been moved to the former Milham Ford School, off Marston Road.

In 2010 Berkeley Homes was given planning permission to build 316 student flats on the site and this was completed in 2012.

The public consultation will take place at Oxford Brookes’s Gipsy Lane campus today between 3pm and 8pm.

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